THE RUNNER (2026)

Starring Gal Gadot, Damian Lewis, Alfred Enoch, Kenton Lloyd Morgan, Rory Wilmot, Phoenix Di Sebastiani, Nathan Kirby, Helder Fernandes, Will Austin, Mark Hampton, Stevie Binns, John Leader, Simon Nader Mirza, Jessie Cave, Michael Fox, Simon Shorten, Miles Mitchell, Raquel Appiah, Lorenzo Martelli, Clive Kneller, Tanvi Joshi, Aaron Gill and Ava Galindez.

Screenplay by Mark Gibson.

Directed by Kevin Macdonald.

Distributed by Amazon MGM Studios. 84 minutes. Rated PG-13.

Just in the past week I have reviewed three high-profile, big-budget, name-cast-led made-for-streaming films – one from each major outlet, Netflix, Apple TV+ and now Prime Video. While all of them were quite bad in their own ways, The Runner is by far the worst. And yet oddly, it is also the most entertaining of the three – in a “they’re-not-really-doing-this-are-they?” hate-watch kind of way.

The Runner is extremely bad, but it is also amusingly bad. As is often said, it’s easy to make a bad movie, but it is extremely hard to make a “good” bad movie – one in which everything is so off-the-rails bonkers that it becomes oddly fascinating to watch. That’s something you can’t fake; it’s an odd state of grace (or disgrace) that you either hit or miss. Don’t be surprised if The Runner ends up getting a cult following like Plan 9 From Outer Space, The Room and its fellow made-for-Prime Video trainwreck, the remake of The War of the Worlds.

Gal Gadot plays Maia Martin, a London lawyer and the single mother of an eight-year-old son. She is sort of dating her boss but also sort of holding him at arm’s length. She is working a high-profile organized crime case involving a secret witness but is still normal enough to dote on her son Noah.  

When she drops Noah off at school, the kid asks her to walk him in, but she decides for the first time in their lives that he is a big enough boy to go in by himself. This film has all the subtle foreshadowing of a sledgehammer.

A half-hour later while jogging through a park she gets a call from a mysterious man who says that he has kidnapped Noah and put him in a diabetic coma. She has one hour to jog miles across London and kill the witness, or Noah is dead. She may not stop. She may not talk to the police – or anyone, for that matter. And she must follow his instructions to the letter.

The idea itself does not make a lick of sense. Why would a blood-thirsty and brilliant professional killer go to so much trouble to set up this massive, complex cyber-plot and then put the responsibility of the actual kill on a civilian, one who has never killed anyone? Particularly since she is professionally anti-crime – as a lawyer she is quite aware of the legal and moral consequences of the act.

However, she agrees to it, apparently willing to mentally and physically torture herself, put herself in personal, professional and legal jeopardy and to take the life of another human being in order to save her son. Who says motherhood isn’t hard? While I get, yes, she would do anything to make sure her son survives, she does seem to fall into the mindset that she needs to do it a bit quickly. Or does she?

So Maia jogs throughout the London streets, avoiding police, passersby, cell-phone thieves, construction sites, traffic, ambulances, rivers, trees, and all sorts of urban clutter. Needless to say, the phone mastermind’s best laid plans go awry early and often, but she still pushes herself to the limit to make her appointment with destiny and save her son.

Late in the film after the original plan has turned out to be flawed – no great surprise – the phone killer spontaneously, unbelievably says, “Rules are made to be broken,” which is the exact opposite of everything he has been preaching and demanding of her the entire film.

Hmmm, do you think this plot isn’t completely thought out?

Strangely enough, the actual plot is very similar to that of Drop last year. That movie just didn’t have as much running and heavy breathing. Drop is about a random woman on a first date who is suddenly intruded on by a cyber watcher. The person on the cell phone tells her he has kidnapped her child, is watching her every move and if she doesn’t kill her date, the child will die. However, almost the entirety of that film takes place in one setting, a large restaurant. The confined setting forced the tension to build rather than run wild. And while it was quite imperfect on its own, Drop was significantly better than this film. The premise was absurd in Drop too, but that film was executed better so you gave the filmmakers more leeway.

The Runner doesn’t earn that kind of audience patience, and yet with every loony plot twist, every ridiculous barrier tossed at Maia, every coldly ominous quip from her tormentor, an odd thing happens. The audience doesn’t buy into the story the movie is selling for a second, and yet a fascinating sense of “how low will they go?” takes hold and it becomes weirdly intriguing.

As the action on the screen becomes ever more absurd, there are more and more plot beats that confound logic and the viewer has two choices: turn the damned thing off or just strap in for the insane ride and watch it ironically. God help me, I strapped in.

So like I said earlier, the critic in me knows that The Runner was completely awful, but I can’t pretend I didn’t get some enjoyment from it – even if it was not necessarily the type of enjoyment the filmmakers were looking for.

Gal Gadot – who, granted, isn’t the world’s best actor when standing still – deserves serious praise just for all the shit she put herself through in making The Runner. She is jogging through much of the action, an acting marathon that almost feels like the universe is punishing her for something – maybe the live-action Snow White remake. Her acting here was decent but not close to hitting Streep levels, but just because of the physical exertion and mistreatment she endures throughout the film, I refuse to blame the failure of The Runner on her. She gave her all – literally – even if the endorphins she had to deal with never get transferred to the audience.

The film is directed with hyperactive drive by Kevin Macdonald, who seems to hope that if the audience never has a moment to think – and this film is done mostly in real time with a very short 84-minute run time – then maybe they won’t notice how little sense it makes. It’s hard to obsess about plot holes when there are two or three more heading down the trail right behind. By the time the credits roll, you’re left marveling less at the story than at the sheer audacity of how it’s told.

So yes, The Runner is a terrible film – sloppy, illogical, derivative and breathlessly silly – and yet when taken in the right mindset, it is rather enjoyable. A hate‑watch, but a lively one. What can I say? Rules are made to be broken.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2026 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: September 3, 2026.